161 Keeping page numbers on top of master items

Keyboard Shortcuts

Managing page numbers is especially important in large InDesign documents or publications, but it can become tricky when these numbers are obscured by page elements such as headers and footers. In this short video, you'll learn tips on keeping page numbers on top of master items at all times, making it easier to keep track of your progress through the document.

- [Voiceover] When you're working witha long document like a magazine or a catalog,it's really important to keep trackof what's happening with repeating elementslike headers and footers on your document pages.I want to give you a couple of tips on how tomanage footers, specifically page numbers,when they become obscuredby other elements on the page.So here we're looking at a magazine spread,and the footers are behaving nicely.They're in the white area at the bottom.Plenty of room to read them and the footersare coming from the master page.

You can tell because I can't select them here,and they are bordered by this dotted green outline,and the dotted outline tells methat it's coming from a master page.So it's been properly set up.Your footers and headers should alwaysbe coming from the master page.And if we look at the master page,we can see the original items, and that they havea current page number placeholder.So it's working perfectly fine for this spread.Let's look at a different spread.If I come to this spread, you can seethat it's obscured by this picture on the left.

On this spread, it's obscuredby the picture and the background color.Now the fix for that is to move the folio to a layerthat's higher than where the my page backgroundsand my images are going to appear.Using the "Layers" panel just for creating one layer,just for your master page items, is a good idea.So here we can see the designer did usea number of layers, but they leftthe master page items on the bottom.So I'm going to move those above background,and above picture.

And now we can see, here they are.They appear just fine.One problem, though, is that the master page folioon the left might be a little hard to read, being dark.But let's see if it's going to hurt anything else.Over here, that's pretty hard to read.Maybe if we made it a different color.Or especially on the front spread.The footers do appear above the picture, which is good,but they're really hard to read, which is bad.So what we want to do is make them a different color.There's two ways you can go about this.One is you can override by "Command+Shift+Click",or "Control+Shift+Click", which I'll do to one of these,which allows me to edit it.

It frees it up from being on the master page,and then I can select the text, and color it.But, in general, I'm philosophically opposedto overriding master page items.I would prefer to just applya different master to this page.So I'm going to "Undo".And I just did "Undo Override Master Page Items".And, by the way, if you're not sureif something's been overridden on the page,here's where it's hiding:in the "Pages" panel menu,in "CC" it's now part of the "Master Pages" flyout.

So here you can choose "Remove All Local Overrides".In earlier versions of InDesign,"Remove All Local Overrides"was part of the main panel menu.I have already created another master pagecalled "Lightfooter", as you can see.It's based on Master Page A,but the only thing that's different is thatI have colored the type white, or paper,and the rule above it is also paper.If I look at the "Swatches" panel,you can see the type is colored with "Paper".So let's go back to "Pages", come back over here,and now I just want to apply a different masterto this page, and this page as well.

That looks great.By dragging and dropping just one page at a time,instead of the whole spread,you have complete controlover how you want these to appear.So, on this page for example, I might wantthe footer on the left to be white.So I'll drag this guy right on top of page 50,and there you go.So we have a light-colored footer on the left, easy to read,and a dark-colored footer on the right, also easy to read.By using master pages and layers intelligently,you can gain control over the headersand footers in your long documents.

Resume Transcript Auto-Scroll

Author

Updated

2/15/2018

Released

8/25/2011

In this series, David Blatner and Anne-Marie Concepción, co-hosts of the web's top resource for InDesign tips and tricks, InDesignSecrets.com, share some hidden and sometimes surprising workflow tips that will make working in InDesign more efficient and more fun. The course covers built-in timesaving features such as Quick Apply and auto-expanding text, but also little-known tricks, such as using the eyedropper to copy and paste character and paragraph text attributes and making accurate selections by selecting through or even into objects.

New techniques will be added to the collection every other week, so check back early and often. Find more tips and tricks at indesignsecrets.com.

Skill Level Intermediate

28h 53m

Duration

2,057,422

Views

Show MoreShow Less

Q: Why can't I earn a Certificate of Completion for this course?

A: We publish a new tutorial or tutorials for this course on a regular basis. We are unable to offer a Certificate of Completion because it is an ever-evolving course that is not designed to be completed. Check back often for new movies.